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Published: February 8th 2015
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Phone booth
Just a phone booth but a rather nice photo Tortoises, a tidal island and Freddy Mercury
We have recently come back from a two week long vacation in Tanzania. Here below you see the first blog entry from that trip and it is all about Zanzibar Island.
The largest city on Zanzibar Island is, to confuse things, named Zanzibar Town. But in this blog entry Zanzibar Town will be called Stone Town a name that actually refers to the old town only and not the rest of Zanzibar Town. But it simplifies things a little bit to use the name Stone Town so that is what we will do.
We arrived in Tanzania at Dar Es Salaam's international airport. From there we took a taxi to the ferry terminal and took the first available ferry to Zanzibar. We arrived in Stone Town a few hours later and after a short walk we arrived in our hotel.
Stone Town is a nice town that, for good and for bad, attracts a lot of tourists. Though there are much fewer tourists there now than it used to be. One of the reasons for that is that in the recent years
Boats along the beach
Boats along the beach in Stone Town there have been several terrorist attacks in Kenya. There is always a risk that terrorist groups will look towards other countries for new targets and then Tanzania is definitely a candidate. But the number of tourists all over Africa has dropped in the last couple of months due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. People actually are afraid to visit Tanzania because there is Ebola in Sierra Leone. The fact that there is an entire continent in between West Africa and Tanzania proves that many tourists aren't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Stone Town has been declared a world heritage site because it is a well preserved traditional trading town. They used to conduct trade between Africa and Europe, India and the Arab countries.
One of the goods they were trading in back in the 18th and 19th century was slaves. Stone Town was a hub for trade with slaves from Africa to other parts of the world. On the spot where the old slave market used to be they built a cathedral after the slave trade was outlawed.
Possibly the most photographed house in entire Stone Town is
Cannons
Along the water front in Stone Town we saw these cannons known as Mercury House, named after the singer Freddy Mercury who was born in Stone Town. However Mercury might be a fake. It is possible that the house labelled "Mercury House" has never been the home of the famous singer. This is not the first time Freddy Mercury has been featured in this blog. There is a statue of him
in Montreux.
Another mislabelled place near Stone Town is Prison Island. There has never been a prison on Prison Island. They planned to have a prison on the island and they started building it. But when it was near finished it was an urgent need for a quarantine station. So the prison was used for that instead. But the name Quarantine Island sounds so lame that even though not a single thief ever did time there the island still goes under the name Prison Island.
On Prison Island there is a colony of giant tortoises. The tortoises were originally brought there from the Seychelles as a gift from the British governor. Today the tortoises live in a protected compound on the island.
After Stone Town we went to the west coast of
Stone Town - World Heritage Site
Stone town has been declared a world heritage site because it is a well preserved traditional trading town. Zanzibar. We had booked a hotel room at Zanzibar Rock Hotel in a small village named Pongwe. In Pongwe there are a few hotels and resorts but the area is very quiet and relaxed. The other hotels might be larger and more luxurious than the place we stayed at but Zanzibar Rock Hotel is spectacular in that it is situated on a tidal island. At low tide you can easily walk to the hotel but at high tide you either have to wade or take a boat (free of charge for guests at the hotel).
We spent Christmas is Pongwe and we are very happy with our choice of hotel for the holiday. A few relaxing days in paradise was exacly what we wanted. During the low tide the water edge pulls away from the beach revealing a large mud- and sandflat. In the mud the villagers have a seaweed plantation and when we walked out on a sand bar leading to the water we also found a small coral reef where we snokeled for a while.
This is all we had from Zanzibar. The next blog entry will be from a safari we
Old Fort
The inside the ruins of the Old Fort in Stone Town is a good place to go to get away from the noise and the crowds in the city made from Arusha
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Very exotic!
How great to stay on an island for Christmas though it appears you'd get your feet wet even at low tide! Love this bush baby, the giant tortoises and a seaweed plantation (I didn't even know they existed!). Glad you had a relaxing time and weren't kidnapped!